[Music]

Zach talks about music and soundtracks and how they should enhance a scene, yet not be used as a crutch. To illustrate the point we see the Neb scene when Neo comes out of the construct for the first time. Remember? He's all freaking out and the room is spinning and then he pukes? Anyway, they show it with the background music and then without. The scene is just as good without, in my opinion, but I can actually feel the subtle difference with the music. Movies do this all the time, you know, manipulate us with emotion-inducing chords and stuff.
Zach, however, really prefers to leave that stuff out through the first cut, so you can get a feel for the rhythm of the action. We love Zach, I'm so glad he got that Oscar.

[Sound effects]

High up on my list of dream jobs is Foley Artist. They are the people that make sound effects, and the Grand Pooh-Bah of foley artists is the Sound Designer. Dane Davis was the sound designer for The Matrix. He came up with all the noises in the movie. From the sound of insertion of the skull-jack to the Squiddie. Valves and hatches and control panels, all of the stuff that was created for the film, had to have unique sounds to go with the visual. Dane combined and created dozens of different sounds, toilet plungers to beating tires, to create one sound effect. It sounds like a lot of work, but I bet it was a fun lot of work.
Dane tells us about the sounds created for the fight sequences. They went to "technical junkyards" and brought back everything that whooshed. Then they went into the studio and whooshed the hell out of the stuff, recorded, pitched it down, pitched it up, until they got a whole lot of different whooshes, body hits and the like. They were going for an earthy, brutal quality and it works. We love Dane, too.

[The Score]

Don Davis, Composer, tells us about the concept of "reflections" in the film, gives some examples like Trinity's motorcycle mirror and the spoon, and explains how he carried the theme over into the music. He uses big words like "contrapuntal" but he seems likeable enough.
Next we segue into the club scene with that Rob Zombie song blaring. OK, it works for the film, but can I say, for the record, I really dislike Rob Zombie. He's the George Thorogood of the new millenium. I swear I can't tell the difference between any of his songs. Anyway, back to Don. He's saying something about the music, but I'm still busy hating Rob Zombie.
Thank Buddha, Jason Bentley shows up and starts talking about the good music on the soundtrack.

Jason knows his music, and has literally a wall of albums and CDs behind him. The Wachowskis had definite ideas about the music. Rage Against the Machine. Prodigy. He explains that the concepts in the film very much matched the future-minded mentality that a lot of the producers of electronic music subscribe to. Then he talks about my favorite song on the soundtrack. Rob D.'s Clubbed to Death. I love this song. If I ever get married, I want to walk down the aisle to it. I have it all planned out down to walking back up the aisle with Kea…er, I mean, ...the groom to the piano at the end. Yeah, I have an overactive imagination sometimes. Hush. Anyway, Jason agrees with me, this song is a gem.

Joel shows up and talks about some stuff, something about things not being ready on time, the tension involved with releasing a movie. But he really looks like such a "Guido" that I'm sure he just has to show up and things fall into place, or, you know, it's "sleep with the fishes" time.

[The Finished Film]

Joel talks about him and Lorenzo (See? I'm telling you….Guido) watching the final cut and they were "out of [their] minds"
WB guy was blown away. As was Hugo. Carrie-Ann had a hard time watching herself. Wow, if she's like that, I don't feel so bad about my camera-shyness. Although if I looked like Trinity, I'd be strutting my stuff in front of the video/big screen demo at Best Buy every single day. Laurence says two things happened when he saw the film, one was he remembered suddenly all the philosophical and spiritual lessons that are layered in the film, and the other was that Morpheus scared the shit out of him. I didn't think Morpheus was scary at all, did you? Hmmm.
Keanu says it was more suspenseful than he thought it would be and he found it very moving. That's it. That's all he says and I don't know about you, but I feel kind of gypped. Makes me wonder what he isn't saying. Geof Darrow says he was amazed that they did what they set out to do.
I'm amazed that they had the vision to begin with.
The Matrix is unlike any movie I've ever seen, and beyond any dream I've ever had.
The Wachowskis are brilliant.
I'm so grateful for this movie, and that goes beyond Keanu.